Excerpt from Those Darn Shepherds!
They’re at it again.” Brother Fortner, one of the three wisemen in the pageant, adjusted his royal robes and rolled his eyes.
I huffed, putting down my clipboard. “Those darn shepherds. What is it this time?”
The entire cast of almost one hundred people was shivering under their sewn up sheets at the dress rehearsal of our live Nativity. This event had become a wonderful tradition for over twenty years running, and the entire town looked forward to coming on the Saturday before Christmas to watch the Mormon pageant. It was a great missionary tool, using the talents and resources from all three wards in our building. The angels sang in perfect harmony, and the three kings wore lavish costumes with gifts of real myrrh and frankincense. We even had a live donkey that behaved beautifully—if only I could say the same thing about the shepherds.
In the past it had always been an ‘adults only’ experience, but for some reason this year the bishop had gotten the idea to use the sixteen-year-old priests as shepherds. It was a huge mistake. Everyone else took their parts seriously, but the shepherds had spent most of their time joking around or pulling pranks. They had sort of devolved into their own shepherd gang with my son as the ringleader.
As I rounded the corner where the boys were supposed to be waiting for their cue, I nearly fell on my face. Josh had been holding his crook out to intentionally trip me. I barely caught myself and turned to face him, “What are you thinking? This isn’t funny.”
The three other boys held in their snickers while Josh shook his head. “It wasn’t supposed to be for you. Ty said Bro. Fortner was coming over…”
“Listen, you guys, I am serious.” I shook my finger at them in desperation. “This play is important, and I want to see you change your attitudes.”
“Mom, we don’t even want to be here. You can fire us. We won’t mind.” The other boys nodded their heads in agreement.
I looked at them and took a deep breath. “The pageant is tomorrow. Please, I beg of you, just behave for one more day.”
Ty shook his head. “This is stupid.”
“It is so sad you can’t see what we are doing here,” I said to him and then turned to all the boys. “If you try to feel the spirit of this event and remember what we are celebrating, you might get something out of this.”
I walked away feeling hopeless. Later when the shepherds started poking the ugly doll in the manger, I let them go home early and we finished the dress rehearsal without them.
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